Chainlink #9: Elven Spirit Abuse

Elves are from a planet millions of lightyears away, or perhaps from an alternate dimension where life evolved somewhat differently. They're pretty much all dead now (the ones that came to Coris, at least). They arrived as refugees from a great calamity, explorers seeking new horizons, or, most prevalently, the losers in some great, GOT ass power struggle. Nobody knows about this because elves are all dead, but bits and pieces of it survive in myths about the elves (every culture on Coris has a story about the fallen angels or heavenly bodies which enslaved the world before the gods seared them from the face of the planet). Elven spiritual philosophies and belief systems were as varied as those of humanity but the ones that came to Coris mostly subscribed to the three soul model, because the faschy populist uprising that got exiled here used it as their guiding philosophy. Beings may have an animating soul, which gives life and seeks to grow, an aspirant soul, which grants desire and seeks carnal pleasures and food, and a knowing soul, that wants to understand the world, and bestows intelligence. Plants have only an animating soul, animals have an animating and aspirant soul, and intelligent beings (like the elves) have all three. This is a common idea in elven mysticism and there are some branching philosophies around what exactly the three souls mean, but the common take amongst Coris's population is that the goal of an elf is to ascend to immortality by merging their souls into a perfect union of growth, desire, and knowing. 

Some of that is fun but it does feel a bit too "pretty," so I'm not sure if I'm gonna keep it. Whatever, it's not really something that players are supposed to interface with, unless I'm running a particularly ancient game where elves still exist and have debates about whether or not humanity possesses a knowing soul (they'd like to think they don't, because it makes the subjugation and enslavement a bit more morally defensible, in their eyes). Whatever the case, elves have a weird relationship with souls and spirits and ghosts and shit. They had very little against necromancy of the soul, it was one of the bedrocks of elven styled magic. This is because when someone dies, their aspirant soul is the thing that becomes a ghost, the animating soul just kinda gets obliterated and the knowing soul cycles back through the elven realm of wisdom, where its contents will be disseminated amongst the knowing souls of the newborn. The aspirant soul is an ugly pitiful thing by itself, and it's basically fine to just torture it however you see fit, according to the elves. This means if you're an elven warrior and you're fighting alongside a compatriot, and you catch a shitty human arrow in the neck, not only do you wind up bleeding to death painfully, your buddy is also probably gonna rip the ghost out of your body and either use it as a shield pack or chuck it at the shitty human archers where it'll explode in a shower of agonizing ghost fire. In some cases your ghost might get kept around as a sort of spirit assassin or something, controlled by a grand elven necromancer, in which case your agony doesn't just last for a few hours, but all of eternity. 

Elves generally have very little sympathy for the dead, as I'm sure you can infer from those two little tidbits of info. Death is a personal failure. You should've lived forever if you didn't want your ghost to be tortured for all eternity. It's not even all of you being tortured, just your core personality without any of its memories or anything like that. Don't worry about it too much. 

A lot of magic items made during the period of Elven rule are powered by elf ghosts. It's the only way to make the sentient ones, or at least, it's the easiest way. It's so easy to use elven ghosts to make sentient magic items that sometimes magic items made in this way just sorta become self aware like skynet which is frankly reason enough to not do it, but they're super powerful so if you're a shitty space elf you might decide the risk is worth the reward. 

The most common way of binding elven ghosts was in small stone or wooden dowels, about 5 inches in length and an inch in diameter, carved with runes. This practice was super widespread, even outside of military usage. Most elves wore a necklace with a little carved idol on it containing their grandpa or mom or brother's spirit, which could whisper little affirmations in their ears and give them advice on how to navigate strategically difficult situations. If you were a soldier you'd probably get your idol stuck inside an automaton with a bunch of other idols steering the thing and fighting for ultimate control. Sometimes you can still find these little idols with their spirits in tact. They might know important knowledge or something, but 99,999 times out of 100,000 they are terribly fucked up after spending millennia inside of a fucking rock, and so they will not be very reliable. Most of them want to get out and will say or do anything they can to accomplish this. 

Sometimes the thing inside of the idol isn't even an elf ghost, they really did not discriminate when it comes to spiritual manipulation. Nature spirits, demons, human souls, you name it, elves would've put it in a stick and used it to power their house. They were very bad people.

Spirit prisons are a common find when digging through elven ruins. Despite the most common form being small cylinders, the ones that survived the ravages of time while holding onto their prisoners tend to be more intricate, artistic pieces. This is not due to the shape of the vessel per se, it's just that the higher quality prisons were usually only available to the wealthy, and thus were made with more care in all respects. When these statues are found by human(etc) cultures, they are hauled off and marveled at. Sometimes they get interpreted as idols housing a god or at the very least serving as a mouthpiece for one (and depending on what's inside the idol, this interpretation may not be all that far off). Some mages have libraries full of these things, they are very prized amongst wizards who want to figure out how to reverse engineer the technology. Deliver them to a wizard, and they'll pay you quite well, if they don't decide to slam your consciousness into one of their homemade soul prisons for practice. Wizards are really terrible, aren't they?

Planes of Non-existence

There’s no truly unified theory of magic in Coris, because magic is inherently a rogue element in an otherwise stable reality, and its practices are extremely culturally specific and spiritual in nature. Basically, nobody is thinking about studying magic as a scholarly pursuit until rather late in the game, and even when they start, things are…messy. That said, I'm at privilege to illuminate some of the particulars, what with my god’s eye view as the creator of the setting. To their credit, the scholar mages of Coris’s Age of Enlightenment will figure out a fair deal of this, but they will also be very very wrong about a lot of it, and follow it to conclusions that it can’t really support, because again, magic is a rogue element in reality. 

Universal Madness

The universe in which Coris sits is older than ours by a wide margin. Originally, the laws of reality worked as intended, but in its senescence, reality has developed a sort of dementia, forgotten that it is not alive, and that it cannot hear the wishes of those who live atop it. It’s all very confusing for the universe, and it’s doing the best it can to ignore the stimuli of the churning, wonderful, improbable existence of itself, but its will is just not what it used to be, frankly. Sometimes, when one of the infinitesimally small things that lives atop it speaks a command in its language (that of its creator, who left long ago), it can’t help but bend the rules a bit. It’s not intentional disobedience, mind, after all, it’s starting to forget what the rules even are.

When the universe wants to enact change, the easiest way is to open a small pocket of itself to allow access to somewhere else. These planes, as they will be called when they are discovered, are sort of like staging areas of reality, or stores of raw material which were used in its creation. They are almost all infinite, making them good sources of energy to draw from. They’re all totally inhospitable, despite the typical usage of plane in D&D vernacular. The wizards who will try to travel to these planes will all meet gruesome, agonizing ends on account of this fact. They simply don't support life, or at least, not our lives. Each plane has its own properties, lending themselves well to different tasks. Here’s a handful of them. 

Stella Invictus

The victorious star, also called the Grey Light by some, or the Old Well in some older traditions. This is an important, fundamental source of magic, one that most traditions rely on. It's pretty boring, as far as they go, it's basically just a universe full of infinite energy. Wizards like this one because it lets them sling fireballs and lightning bolts, which is almost a universal fascination amongst magic users. It's a difficult source to master, for energy does not flow out of the Well gently. Interestingly, it can be harder to get just a drop of the star's power than a whole stream. This is why most apprentice wizards are taught simple light spells early on, it teaches them discipline before they get to disintegration beams, so they know how to actually stop the magic once its served its purpose.

During the industrial revolution some wizards will figure out they can use this dimension to generate infinite power, and it will almost universally go horribly wrong. A bit later down the line some people will develop a more stable means of accessing it, but the generators they need to turn it into a workable industrial power source have a tendency to blow up like Chernobyl times one billion. Working in one also gives you super cancer, which, not incidentally, being a wizard also typically does. Oops!

Division

Known to some as the Edgeless Sharp or Severance or a hundred other names for blades, Division is a plane made up entirely of cutting. The plane is a flat circle, a continuous cutting motion. This one is super easy to access because people really like to kill each other with swords, and so the universe has sort of let the borders between here and there slip since the violence seems pretty normal to it at this point. Accessing Division lets you sever without a blade, which is not always used for violence, surprisingly. It excises tumors, it cleaves spacetime to hasten travel, ends relationships. Mostly though it lets you do shit like this.

A beloved tool of heartless murderers and poor swordsmen. Since it's relatively easy to tap into (compared to the other dimensions, that is, it still requires a monkish devotion to the craft by any layperson's estimate), it's not unlikely to encounter a "mage" who can only draw from Division. Orders of monastic warriors master its usage without words, save for maybe a brusque command ("cleave" or "split") hurled heavy at their target like stone bullets from a sling. Division often seeks to steer its users into a state of baseless violence to test their will, so it's regarded as a tool to be used sparingly and with great consideration amongst actual wizards. Still, the temptation to wield the dimensional blade of want is powerful once you've seen it cut.

Tiamat

Also the name of a god/demon/monster in some mythologies, said to be the mother of dragons and potentially the origin of all life. The plane of Tiamat is one of reptile flesh and poison, an unending, infinite gyre of squirming, scaled tendrils. Tiamat is a font of raw material, to be sculpted as the user sees fit. Invaluable for beast mages, and for armies. In the past, the mystery cult of Tiamat was able to sponsor invasions by sending their wizard-priests alongside their armies. The flesh drawn from Tiamat was consumed by the soldiers, turning the inner circle of the cult into walking pantries. The ability to offer fresh meat of decent quality was also a powerful diplomatic tool that could be used to sway the fealty of a lord's peasantry. 

Drawing power from Tiamat is seen as taboo in some parts of the world in part because of these practices. The magic represented a strategic power that the established Athic lords were unable to fully deal with, so mages who attempted to utilize the art were hunted with extreme prejudice. It became a lost art, and the consumption of the flesh was said to be linked to disease, immoral behavior, and demonic possession. Disease was indeed a risk when the summoning was done by an inexperienced user of the craft, but the greatest effect of the flesh's consumption was mutation. Granted, this happened on a slow enough time scale that it was invisible for several generations. In places where the practice managed to stick, genetic drift has led to a greater prevalence of the hornéd folk.

The Depths

An eternal ocean of darkness, thick and impenetrable as ink. The waters of the Sea of Night are drawn upon to form the black mists which make up most temporary magical constructs and illusions. This mist can also obscure, create darkness, soften footsteps, so on and so forth. This plane is also very well known for its inhabitants; there are strange and terrible things within the sunken sea, living lives unburdened by the sun. They can be drawn out too, if one is skilled enough. This is a bad idea for two reasons. One, they owe you no fealty, and two, they die just as quickly in our dimension as we would in theirs. They're very chaotic summons because of this, which can be useful if you're in a broken arrow type situation and you need to create a big, horrible distraction (emphasis on horrible) but if you are attempting to commune with the creatures as some scholar mages foolishly try, 99 times out of 100, you and your frat buddies are going to be found smeared against the wall while the thing from beyond the pale pops and hisses out of existence in a flurry of steaming organs and gouts of colorless flame.

This one is dangerous because it calls out to you. The Deep sings to mages in their sleep, whispers to them, lets its ink black tendrils slip into the subconscious mind, batting about the id like a cat would idly play with string. It's no wonder people think that the life which dwells in their waters is intelligent, with the way the Depths themselves cry out for attention. The things that live within the Deep don't tend to have an interest in us, but the Deep certainly does. More people enter this dimension than the others, certain some apotheosis awaits them, but inevitably they end up drowning, forever adrift in a pitch black sea.

Divinity

Most planes encountered have a sort of...will, to them. They're not entirely sapient or even sentient, if they live they live like jellyfish and amoebas. Some are much smarter. Division and the Depths are thought to be rather cunning. Speaking to them is mostly impossible, but their will is felt by mages who tap into their power. Some try to conceptualize of them as very large, very powerful spirits, who have a metaphysical mass greater than known terrestrial spirits, and this isn't an inappropriate comparison. Spirits, the lesser kinds, such as elementals, demons, and ghosts, are almost like planes in miniature, which exist in close proximity to our own world. They are much more comprehensible than true planes though. They can be placated and befriended, or bound and forced into servitude. Planes cannot. When you access a plane, when you truly tap into its power, you are not in the driver's seat. It steers you. 

Chainlink #8: Predator Gods

Goblins used to have many gods, now they have less. Here is why.

Some generations ago, the seven clans of the Hebi came from beyond the mountains, riding through the snow atop four legged beasts, black dogs weaving between their legs, baying and growling like devils. They were a conquering people, and everything about them seemed to be made for war. Standing an imposing 5 feet tall, the hobgoblins were indeed a force to be reckoned with. They practiced fire magic, and tamed horses and wolves. They made saunas and hot springs, charted the stars, and baked black bread in dense stone ovens. They conquered and pillaged, and built an empire on soot. It was a modest empire, compared to the kingdoms found beyond the reaches of goblin territory, but it was still large enough to rival some of the great kingdoms of man. They built roads and fortresses, turned villages into cities, then built walls about them, thick and sturdy. For all of this, they demanded tribute from their subjects. 

The gods of the Hebi people were mighty, and like all gods, they were hungry. They were dying too, a war in heaven leaving them wounded and scarred. To feed their gods and to mend their wounds for a time, they needed blood. Animal sacrifice was a daily occurrence in their empire (and was even before the hobgoblins arrived), slaughtered farm animals or captured game were bled atop the fire. The sacrifice of other goblins was more controlled, a punishment for prisoners and war captives, as much a display of power and state authority as it was a religious rite. Highest of all forms of sacrifice, though, was the sacrifice of other gods. The gods of the Hebi were cannibalistic, predatory things, and in the dark of night they bayed for the blood and meat of their kin. The Hebi thus fed many gods to the pyre, which is a difficult task, because the gods of this world are not tangible things of flesh and blood, but spirits. Killing a god means the burning of hundreds of priests who know their rites, the destruction of their temples and idols, the annihilation of their memory. The Hebi did not do this because they hated these other gods, or because they saw them as false. They were very much real, that was necessary in fact, but they were weak in comparison to their own predator gods, and their victory over the conquered clans required appropriate tribute.

Many of the old goblin gods were annihilated in this way, their priests and temples burned in post-battle frenzies. They were given the Hebi's gods to worship in turn, which they did, and slowly the old ways became more distant. The predator gods were seen to be very strong, for they had carried the Hebi to victory, and even if they did not eat other gods, they could protect their flock from any retribution associated with the desecration of sacred grounds. Thusly, these new gods were embraced and worshiped with devotion, and blood flows freely upon the stone of their altars, even now that the Hebi have fallen. The Hebi were, as common wisdom states, forsaken by their gods for their profane deeds, for lying with their wolves as though they were goblins. Another story for another time.